Two of the most enduring novels of the 20th Century are Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD and George Orwell’s 1984. Unfortunately, these dark masterpieces have proven to be stunningly prophetic. Much of the grim, totalitarian future that they predicted has already materialized. And we are steadily careening towards a nightmarish Tommorowland even more diabolical than they predicted. Each author foresaw a bleak future where the Individual was completely subordinate to the State.

Fortunately, we have not yet fully descended into a serf-like, police/surveillance state dystopia, but that seems to be our trajectory. In both of these novels the State has already achieved its mission of either Rule through Force or Control through Distraction. But the reader does not witness the lead-up and implementation of these dictatorial autocracies – which is where we are today.

Some undeniable examples of this include the militarization of police, the replacement of elected leaders with appointed bureaucrats, a slow-burn state of perpetual war and control of the media in only a few rich and powerful hands. Oh, and I forgot to mention the almost inescapable surveillance – because I was busy replacing the tape over the all-seeing eye on my laptop’s webcam.

In 1984, the State, as personified by Big Brother, used a combination of brute force and perception distortion to control its population. The regime’s power was so total that it is described as “a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” Their more subtle truth obliteration tactic is exemplified in their slogans, “War is Peace – Freedom is Slavery – Ignorance is Strength.”

The control grid in BRAVE NEW WORLD that insures their citizens’ submission to the World State is a cornucopia of mindless amusements and sensory stimulations. By keeping the population constantly distracted and gleefully sedated, they insure that the serfs will not discover and question their servitude.

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For decades, political observers have debated which approach our rulers – who I have dubbed The Malignant Overlords – are using to shape the perverse world that they desire. But my conclusion is that they are actually using BOTH tactics. And a huge portion of this tyrannical agenda is being orchestrated from the U.S.A. Certainly in this era of the Superclass, where the 1% have only a puny allegiance to their birth country and an all-consuming addiction to money and power, it is not just American elites that are dictating policy.

But because of the U.S. global prominence with their Reserve Currency status and the Petro-Dollar and their massive military, they are undoubtedly controlling a large portion of the future direction of the planet. Their dominance is so overwhelming that I refer to the Eastern Seaboard power corridor as Orwellia. That’s because this string of power nodes is consistent with the 1984 model of overwhelming strength and control. On the other side of the country – the so-called Left Coast – the “everything is groovy” tyrannical game plan is much more reminiscent of BRAVE NEW WORLD. Therefore I call it Huxlandia. Please allow me to elaborate on this proposition.

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Orwellia stretches from Virginia through Maine. In the southern sector one finds the CIA , the Pentagon and DARPA all ensconced in Virginia. It can be persuasively argued that since the end of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency has clandestinely orchestrated more pain and suffering for more people than any institution on Earth. Whether it was coordinating the secret overthrow of populist governments in Latin America or the faking of invasion-supporting evidence in the Middle East, the CIA has had its invisible fingerprints almost everywhere that has been plagued by intervention and bloodshed.

Nearby is the Pentagon which is the headquarters of the Department of Defense. More accurately it should be termed the Department of Death. Its true mission is defending “national interests” even though the people who comprise the nation have no say in what those interests are – or should be. In a nutshell, their true interest is to rule the world and to prevent any nation from rising in stature so that they become a threat to American hegemony. This explains the insane demonization of Russia and the intensifying tension with China over islands in the South China Sea – not the South United States Sea.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is the organization that transforms the Pentagon directive of “Full Spectrum Death” into actual weapons. These are the folks who manage to actually sleep at night even though they are creating robotic soldiers and robotic military attack dogs. Check out some of these creations on Youtube; and then try to imagine what you would say to your five year old daughter when she asks, ”What is your job, daddy?”

Then, when you cross the nearby Potomac River you are in Washington, D.C. where you find the federal government power nodes and the all-knowing and all-powerful Federal Reserve. These are the folks that have siphoned the wealth of the Middle Class into the pockets of the banksters. These are the people who have instituted a policy of perpetual war without any approval from the citizenry. These are the oligarchs who have militarized the police in preparation for the day when the common person will not take it anymore.

Drive north a short distance and you will arrive at the NSA headquarters in Fort Mead, Maryland. The National Security Agency probably took 1984 not as a work of cautionary fiction but as an operating manual. They have managed to out- Big Brother the original Big Brother. They are listening to you, tracking you, facial-recognizing you and possibly in the future arresting you for Pre-Crime, which is exactly what Orwell dubbed Thought Crime.

Move up the coast to New York City and you get the Wall Street bankers whose political contributions make them Too Big to Jail. And don’t forget the Council on Foreign Relations, which has been the incubator for some of the most destructive and hideous foreign policy ideas in recorded history. A short train ride away in Connecticut you will find the hedge fund mansions. These guys are masters at conducting economic and monetary warfare in order to help the already obscenely rich become pathologically rich. And our final stop is the Bush Family enclave in Kennebunkport , Maine. Need I say more? Is it true that Big Brother actually vacations there???

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So in Orwellia you have all of these institutions that are relentlessly but subtly steering humanity towards a future where the individual is constantly surrendering more freedom (“Please remove your shoes and approach the X-Ray machine.”) Meanwhile, the governments are persistently becoming more powerful and more centralized. And to worsen this already repugnant vision of the future, there is the power of the surveillance grid to almost completely eradicate any personal privacy.

Defenders of the status quo will argue that the utterly inescapable and suffocating oppression depicted in 1984 has not swept across the planet. And thankfully, that is correct. But I fear that none of the paths that human society is currently traveling lead to greater peace and freedom and justice and prosperity. On the contrary, they steer us towards the wasteland future that Orwell and Huxley so eloquently described. Their prophetic warnings should not be ignored.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:I had intended to also include my discussion of Huxlandia in this essay, but I would prefer to share that with you in the next one. However, rather than my normal two weeks between essays, I will try to have that for you in about a week.